Oh, so it had been nothing to do with Microsoft. Now something else, on something kind of unrelated, has... well, a little. Maybe.
Eventually, we will get to the bottom of this. With all things potentially damaging to revenue streams of important enough organizations stripped out, sure, but the truth nevertheless.
If you practice Mnemonic memory techniques a little bit, you'll find that memorizing a 16+ character random password generated for you by a good passgen isn't hard.The best passwords are easy for humans to remember and hard for machines to brute-force. Phrases of unrelated words tend to be ideal.
I used to memorize random passwords like bahopre3 (one digit away from one of my old passwords that was compromised). But random numbers and symbols add entropy less quickly than just adding words.
Something like "purple dog flowers" or "social squash Augustus" is trivially easy to remember, but surprisingly difficult to brute-force. If there are 1000 common English words, then each word is about as good as 2 to 3 letters. If you use one or more obscure words, the passphrase gets radically stronger. Despite having more letters, I've found that pass-phrases are faster to type than passwords, and rather than mess with capitalization, numbers, and symbols, which are all slow to type, I prefer to just add more words.
Also, best to use a password manager so that you only need one or two actual passphrases.
Actual brute force attacks aren't that common, most attackers use permutating dictionary attacks. By using real words, no matter the rarity, you're reducing the possible combinations to a tiny fraction of the total... and more importantly that possibility space is what will be checked first.
Thankfully Duo is now in Ciscos very capable hands. They've never cut corners on security.
Thankfully Duo is now in Ciscos very capable hands. They've never cut corners on security.
I’m a bit confused by the writing: is this saying that Dark Halo, APT29, and Cozy Bear are all the same?
Also: I’m not managing to work out message flows for the 2FA thwart. Probably because I don’t sufficiently understand how Duo works, but the article assumes I do.
I can't believe that this article doxed all of my passwords.
I’m a bit confused by the writing: is this saying that Dark Halo, APT29, and Cozy Bear are all the same?
Bank sites tend to have low length caps that cramp this style, unfortunately.The best passwords are easy for humans to remember and hard for machines to brute-force. Phrases of unrelated words tend to be ideal.
I used to memorize random passwords like bahopre3 (one digit away from one of my old passwords that was compromised). But random numbers and symbols add entropy less quickly than just adding words.
Something like "purple dog flowers" or "social squash Augustus" is trivially easy to remember, but surprisingly difficult to brute-force. If there are 1000 common English words, then each word is about as good as 2 to 3 letters. If you use one or more obscure words, the passphrase gets radically stronger. Despite having more letters, I've found that pass-phrases are faster to type than passwords, and rather than mess with capitalization, numbers, and symbols, which are all slow to type, I prefer to just add more words.
Also, best to use a password manager so that you only need one or two actual passphrases.
Once hacked, the only safe thing to do is rebuild everything.
The akey is needed to authenticate to the Duo service when it’s time to phone home to Duo and initiate second factor auth. So the interesting bits here are how exactly the akey was compromised, but more so... how the actor was able to use that akey to bypass the call to the Duo service. Was it configured not to prompt for MFA on every login?
If you want secure there is only one way and this man knew how:
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If you practice Mnemonic memory techniques a little bit, you'll find that memorizing a 16+ character random password generated for you by a good passgen isn't hard.The best passwords are easy for humans to remember and hard for machines to brute-force. Phrases of unrelated words tend to be ideal.
I used to memorize random passwords like bahopre3 (one digit away from one of my old passwords that was compromised). But random numbers and symbols add entropy less quickly than just adding words.
Something like "purple dog flowers" or "social squash Augustus" is trivially easy to remember, but surprisingly difficult to brute-force. If there are 1000 common English words, then each word is about as good as 2 to 3 letters. If you use one or more obscure words, the passphrase gets radically stronger. Despite having more letters, I've found that pass-phrases are faster to type than passwords, and rather than mess with capitalization, numbers, and symbols, which are all slow to type, I prefer to just add more words.
Also, best to use a password manager so that you only need one or two actual passphrases.
Actual brute force attacks aren't that common, most attackers use permutating dictionary attacks. By using real words, no matter the rarity, you're reducing the possible combinations to a tiny fraction of the total... and more importantly that possibility space is what will be checked first.
Depends. The banks and brokers and 401K/Roth operators I deal with all accept at least 20 characters now (the default length of what Keepass generates). That's still too short to use a decent passphrase, true. But it's way better than they were even a few years ago. They all, also, offer 2FA, though so far they don't accept use of an authenticator app (like MS or Google) or a hardware key like a Yubi, at least for consumer accounts. And finding the 2FA setup options can be a hunting expedition in their options forest.Bank sites tend to have low length caps that cramp this style, unfortunately.The best passwords are easy for humans to remember and hard for machines to brute-force. Phrases of unrelated words tend to be ideal.
I used to memorize random passwords like bahopre3 (one digit away from one of my old passwords that was compromised). But random numbers and symbols add entropy less quickly than just adding words.
Something like "purple dog flowers" or "social squash Augustus" is trivially easy to remember, but surprisingly difficult to brute-force. If there are 1000 common English words, then each word is about as good as 2 to 3 letters. If you use one or more obscure words, the passphrase gets radically stronger. Despite having more letters, I've found that pass-phrases are faster to type than passwords, and rather than mess with capitalization, numbers, and symbols, which are all slow to type, I prefer to just add more words.
Also, best to use a password manager so that you only need one or two actual passphrases.
I'm not seeing any there, there. Kevin B Thompson for instance has share sales from 11-9 to 11-21 going back to 2009 across multiple companies he's been an executive in. Most likely this is structured around blackout periods and tax schedules.Suspicious stock dumping, note the dates:
CEO Recent Trades:
President & CEO Kevin B Thompson sold 166,129 shares of SWI stock on 11/19/2020 at the average price of $21.65. The price of the stock has increased by 1.52% since.
President & CEO Kevin B Thompson sold 533,871 shares of SWI stock on 11/18/2020 at the average price of $21.91. The price of the stock has increased by 0.32% since.
CFO Recent Trades:
EVP CFO & Treasurer James Barton Kalsu sold 68,211 shares of SWI stock on 11/13/2020 at the average price of $22.14. The price of the stock has decreased by 0.72% since.
Directors and Officers Recent Trades:
EVP, Corp Dev & Gen Counsel Jason Bliss sold 67,758 shares of SWI stock on 11/13/2020 at the average price of $22.14. The price of the stock has decreased by 0.72% since.
EVP, Engineering & CTO W. Joseph Kim sold 25,378 shares of SWI stock on 11/10/2020 at the average price of $21.87. The price of the stock has increased by 0.5% since.
EVP & President, ITOM David Gardiner sold 57,251 shares of SWI stock on 11/09/2020 at the average price of $22.47. The price of the stock has decreased by 2.18% since.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/solarwin ... HqbHGrF-KV
Depends. The banks and brokers and 401K/Roth operators I deal with all accept at least 20 characters now (the default length of what Keepass generates). That's still too short to use a decent passphrase, true. But it's way better than they were even a few years ago. They all, also, offer 2FA, though so far they don't accept use of an authenticator app (like MS or Google) or a hardware key like a Yubi, at least for consumer accounts. And finding the 2FA setup options can be a hunting expedition in their options forest.Bank sites tend to have low length caps that cramp this style, unfortunately.The best passwords are easy for humans to remember and hard for machines to brute-force. Phrases of unrelated words tend to be ideal.
I used to memorize random passwords like bahopre3 (one digit away from one of my old passwords that was compromised). But random numbers and symbols add entropy less quickly than just adding words.
Something like "purple dog flowers" or "social squash Augustus" is trivially easy to remember, but surprisingly difficult to brute-force. If there are 1000 common English words, then each word is about as good as 2 to 3 letters. If you use one or more obscure words, the passphrase gets radically stronger. Despite having more letters, I've found that pass-phrases are faster to type than passwords, and rather than mess with capitalization, numbers, and symbols, which are all slow to type, I prefer to just add more words.
Also, best to use a password manager so that you only need one or two actual passphrases.
Getting a Yubikey for signing up with a paid Ars account was a good pitch. Unfortunately, I've found almost zero places that actually let me use it.
Best to be round then!Thankfully Duo is now in Ciscos very capable hands. They've never cut corners on security.
The first step to never cutting corners on security is to not have any corners to cut in the first place!![]()
I dabbled in such techniques for a while (after reading Hannibal), and my impressions were mixed. They seemed to help memorizing complex long sequences in a way that I could recall them hours or days later, which was neat. But when applying this in the long term to a multitude of infrequently used sequences (passwords and phone numbers), I found that for me even the most bizarre mnemonic image encodings would soon blur into a useless chaos. So the credit card number involved Einstein throwing a pizza at Princess Leia on a tricycle, but did Leia crash the tricycle into a shark, or an elephant - or was the elephant crash something from my dentist's phone number?
Eventually I gave up on this. Memorizing the original sequences themselves seemed to work just as well/poorly in the long term, but without the need to spend time translating them into elaborate short stories. Might be just me, though. Do you use such methods for many passwords?
Edit: typo
Edit about 20 min after the original post:
Now that I think about it. dedicated hardware on both ends might work for 2FA as there is no way to remotely extract secrets out of the hardware. This might also work for some types of encryption. But if your entire system is compromised it's hard to defend anything even with dedicated hardware backing.
As for secure passwords, I subscribe to the "take a song or rhyme, and use the first letters from each word in it, and add a couple of special chars in - say every 5th position". I find it makes it trivially easy for me to create 24-32 length totally random passwords that are very easy to recall.
Edit about 20 min after the original post:
Now that I think about it. dedicated hardware on both ends might work for 2FA as there is no way to remotely extract secrets out of the hardware. This might also work for some types of encryption. But if your entire system is compromised it's hard to defend anything even with dedicated hardware backing.
This is how ApplePay works. The private keys are in your device, not exposed to the OS. And the transaction times out after a reasonably short period of time. Assuming there are no flaws in the encryption algorithm, you either need to physically secure the originating device, or you need to brute force it faster than the transaction times out. Good luck with that.
This is why Apple operates they way they do. Your iPhone (iPad, Watch, etc) is a unique hardware key with local biometrics, and you can build out a lot when you have over a billion such devices in circulation. One of the best aspects of it is that it's pretty impervious to phishing. Not only do I not know the private key, I couldn't give it to you if I wanted to. At best I could hand you my device, but I can't leak my credentials remotely.
If you use an existing rhyme, it's not random. You would have to use a random generator to produce the song / rhyme, that's going to negate most of the advantage of your technique. I'm sure it's better than nothing though.As for secure passwords, I subscribe to the "take a song or rhyme, and use the first letters from each word in it, and add a couple of special chars in - say every 5th position". I find it makes it trivially easy for me to create 24-32 length totally random passwords that are very easy to recall.
Who said anything about only music I like? And yes, there is a LOT of music and rhymes on the planet. Combined with the fact you can use any verse or part of the song or rhyme, it means you have close to limitless possibilities. What kind of argument is that?As for secure passwords, I subscribe to the "take a song or rhyme, and use the first letters from each word in it, and add a couple of special chars in - say every 5th position". I find it makes it trivially easy for me to create 24-32 length totally random passwords that are very easy to recall.
Because there are so many songs on the planet and no way whatsoever to find out what kind of music you like.
Anything that is easy for humans to remember is easy to brute force. Especially in today's hyper surveillance world.
The only reasonably secure systems are hardware backed where human memory is not involved.
Of course, if you ship all your data to a third party it's game over from the start.
As I said above you can pick any verse or starting point in a song or rhyme. It might not be mathematically random, but it gives damn close to infinite permutations. And certainly using your own works too. As long as it's stuck in your head for good then you're golden on remembering, and it's as safe as any reasonably memorizable password will ever be. Also, remember some additional randomness is generated by adding symbols (since those would be hard to add based on the rhyme).If you use an existing rhyme, it's not random. You would have to use a random generator to produce the song / rhyme, that's going to negate most of the advantage of your technique. I'm sure it's better than nothing though.As for secure passwords, I subscribe to the "take a song or rhyme, and use the first letters from each word in it, and add a couple of special chars in - say every 5th position". I find it makes it trivially easy for me to create 24-32 length totally random passwords that are very easy to recall.
Who said anything about only music I like? And yes, there is a LOT of music and rhymes on the planet. Combined with the fact you can use any verse or part of the song or rhyme, it means you have close to limitless possibilities. What kind of argument is that?As for secure passwords, I subscribe to the "take a song or rhyme, and use the first letters from each word in it, and add a couple of special chars in - say every 5th position". I find it makes it trivially easy for me to create 24-32 length totally random passwords that are very easy to recall.
Because there are so many songs on the planet and no way whatsoever to find out what kind of music you like.
Anything that is easy for humans to remember is easy to brute force. Especially in today's hyper surveillance world.
The only reasonably secure systems are hardware backed where human memory is not involved.
Of course, if you ship all your data to a third party it's game over from the start.
As I said above you can pick any verse or starting point in a song or rhyme. It might not be mathematically random, but it gives damn close to infinite permutations. And certainly using your own works too. As long as it's stuck in your head for good then you're golden on remembering, and it's as safe as any reasonably memorizable password will ever be. Also, remember some additional randomness is generated by adding symbols (since those would be hard to add based on the rhyme).If you use an existing rhyme, it's not random. You would have to use a random generator to produce the song / rhyme, that's going to negate most of the advantage of your technique. I'm sure it's better than nothing though.As for secure passwords, I subscribe to the "take a song or rhyme, and use the first letters from each word in it, and add a couple of special chars in - say every 5th position". I find it makes it trivially easy for me to create 24-32 length totally random passwords that are very easy to recall.
I can't believe that this article doxed all of my passwords.